An Interiors Pro Shares Tips for Creating an Urban Oasis

Life is hectic. It can be even more overwhelming if you live in a vibrant, bustling urban area. Interior designer Séverine Piller and her boyfriend Gianfranco share this Milan apartment, and she wanted to create a calming, minimal retreat.

Biggest Challenge: The kitchen. As it is also the entry of the apartment, it needed to be functional and practical but still give a feeling of being spacious and inviting. I think we achieved this by designing this bar that also sort of functions as a sideboard while leaving the kitchen as open as possible.

What Friends Say: Everyone tells us they feel like they are on holiday at our place (which is exactly what I wanted to achieve!). It makes me feel great when they say they don’t want to leave because they feel so at home at our place…

Biggest Embarrassment: We were running behind with the renovations and already had friends booked for a weekend. When they arrived, we had no doors inside the apartment, which sort of got tricky when using the bathrooms!